My sister got me books for Christmas. While the gift of a book can go either way (ONGZ best book evah!!!) or (you must hate me if you thought I’d enjoy this), she done good, I tell you what. The 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner was under the tree (I didn’t get to it until the evening due to a massive Christmas Eve fail – yes, it will forever be the year that Mommy was too hungover to open presents). Anyway, that book was Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, who randomly happens to be on the faculty of the graduate school I’m trying to get into next year (insert obligatory sucking-up here).
The story itself reminds me very much of Russell Banks’ Trailerpark, another collection of interwoven stories in a small, stark New England town. Quick synopsis: Olive Kitteridge is a bitch who runs off most people around her, though some people oddly like her. At some point right around menopause, she tells her husband that she’s not interested in sex anymore, and that’s that. He never had sex again because he subsequently fell victim to a stroke and died in a nursing home – but they spent many years in a sexless relationship where he didn’t cheat and she didn’t give it up.
This poses a few ethical questions, as you might imagine. What would you do if you were 60 and your monogamous forever partner told you that sex was no longer on the menu? When the spark went, should Olive’s doting husband have left the relationship? Should he have cheated? Or maybe just pushed her really hard to change her mind? No! He should have got some sex toys. But sexual repression is a powerful thing, especially once one reaches their golden years. My grandparents, God rest their souls, slept in separate rooms and didn’t seem to like each other very much, but goddamnit if they would get a divorce or buy a vibrator. Both probably seemed equally wrong to them. The lovely aag blogged about this same horrible menopause phenomenon -what to do, what to do?
Most people don’t want to think about nursing home sex, but we all totally should. I think volunteers should bring sex toys to nursing homes, demonstrate and distribute them. Or at least direct them to the Vermont Country Store, though I would take personal offence to something called the Impo-Aid Ring Kit. Impo my ass, I just want to improve my performance! The Color Down Under looks interesting though – I never thought about the need to dye my gray pubic hair. I digress. Though maybe I’m showing my age-biased ignorance here. Maybe older folks, whom the vibrator predates, know more about sex toys than I do.
I may have superior ninja skills, but my reporter skills are sadly lacking. That’s why I’m blogging instead of reporting, because I fail at journalism. The thought of conducting an interview makes me want to pop Klonopin, which is exactly what I did before the last interview I was forced to instigate, with a librarian no less. So I let The Medical Humanities Report and Slate do the reporting for me, and I report on that.
It breaks my heart to hear about these poor souls Dorothy and Bob. Star-crossed octogenarians with dementia is the stuff of Shakespeare. Yet the forces that be conspired to keep them apart, like the son who shouted “She had her mouth on my Dad’s penis! And it’s not even clean!”, effectively ruining their relationship and separating them forever. (Which wasn’t clean, the penis or the mouth?) Man, if I ever meet that “devoted son” he’s getting a kick to the teeth (see ninja skills previously referenced). His 95 year-old dad was healthy enough to have sex! And he cockblocked him! While Miss Olive Bitterage swore off sex decades earlier, Dorothy and Bob were happy in the sunset of their years. Until the nursing home staff were instructed to babysit them like horny teenagers until Bob was sent away.
How many of us will be as lucky as Bob and Dorothy to find sexual gratification in our old age, and how many will be unlucky enough to have it taken away by people who get creeped out by old people sex? And how many of us will wither away like Olive, letting go of sex and never looking back?
Only – Olive did look back. In the very last scene of the book, she gets in bed with another guy. She thought her lust was gone, though in fact she somehow misplaced it for decades. Get a damn vibrator, Olive! Dress up like a stripper and smear chocolate on your husband’s body, before it’s too late! Don’t wait until he’s dead and then screw another guy. What would your mother think?
Though the season of giving thanks has passed (funny we have a season for that), I am truly thankful for sex toys. Now, in my sexual peak, and then, when I’m too old to remember my lover’s name. God forbid I end up like Olive (though she sexually redeems herself in the end, she screws her husband out of sex forever), and God help me if I end up like Dorothy. Sex toys for the elderly, all the way. I feel a new volunteer project coming on.
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About the Author
Kristine Empire is a narcissistic freelance writer in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She likes vintage clothes, kills every plant she touches, has a phobia of grocery stores, enjoys getting shout-outs on college radio, and her favorite city in the world is Prague.
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January 9th, 2010 → 12:00 pm @ KristineEmpire
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